FO: Holly and Poinsettia Mittens

I had these finished in the afternoon on Christmas Eve, so I was able to wear them to a holiday party, where they appropriately received lots of ooohs and aaahs.

Pattern: Holly and Poinsettia Mittens, by Carol Sunday, from Interweave Knits Winter 2008

On Ravelry: Pattern Page, my Project Page

Yarn: Sunday Knits Brigadoon (1 color), Angelic (3 colors), Eden (5 colors), and Nirvana (3 colors) Yep, that’s an even dozen colors of yarn.

Needles: 2.75 mm (US 2)

Modifications: I tried a couple of methods of doing intarsia in the round for the holly leaves, and finally gave up. I just knit the mittens plain, and then duplicate-stitched the holly leaves afterward and added afterthought bobbles (see below). I think it worked fine. There is a little bit of shaping that goes on along the edge of the holly leaves that I didn’t do, only because I forgot about it until after I’d finished the first mitten and was doing the embroidery. But it wouldn’t have been that difficult to keep track of where I was in the pattern chart and do the shaping even though I wasn’t doing the intarsia. However, the mittens are fine without the shaping.

I loved the pattern, and loved the yarn.

The shaping for the top and thumb were a little different from other mittens I’ve made, but I liked how they turned out and I might use the same pattern again for other mittens.

I know a lot of people are a bit taken aback by the price for the yarn kit, but I’ve got to say that the yarn is really wonderful, and all of those beautiful colors really make a work of art.

Thanks to Anne for her kit leftovers, I only needed to buy the two main yarns for this pattern instead of the whole kit. There is enough of the colorwork yarn in the kit to probably make at least 4 or 5 sets of mitten cuffs. I used about half of the 50-gram skein of Brigadoon (black tweed) that I bought, and about 6 grams of the 50-gram skein of Eden 3-ply in fir (pine green). So if you’re in love with these mittens and can round up a few friends, you can probably buy 1 kit, 2-3 skeins of Brigadoon, and one extra skein of Eden in fir, and divide that up between 4 or 5 people. Or, just use the leftovers to make a matching (or at least coordinating) hat or cowl. That’s what I’m planning to do with all of the leftover Brigadoon and Eden.

I definitely recommend the Sunday Knits yarn – I especially like how the flecked black tweed looks, and how the reds and greens aren’t quite what you’d expect for Christmas-y mittens. But if you really, really don’t want to buy the kit or all of those different colors of yarns, you could probably get a nice effect by using some hand-painted yarn, using 1 skein of green and one skein of red in place of all of the different colors of green and red.

Afterthought Berries:
Make a slip knot and put it on one DPN, leaving a tail of a couple of inches.
K1f&b, turn. (2 sts)
p1f&b 2 times, turn. (4 sts)
k2tog, ssk (2 sts). Do not turn.
slide sts to other side of needle as if working an I-cord.
k2tog. (1 st)
Pull the yarn tail from the CAST-ON (slip knot) end through the last stitch. This will help draw the knitting into a little ball.
Use the two yarn ends to sew the bobble onto the mitten over the stitch where the bobble would have been made.